Cord hanking machines are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,480,219 and 3,480,220. These patents taken together show apparatus that has a turntable with a pair of upright posts spaced apart thereon, and to wind the cord about the turntable, the operator must manually insert one end of the cord into a clip in the base of the turntable and then actuate the turntable to rotate the same, whereupon the cord is wound about the posts. When the turntable stops after a predetermined number of turns, a gripper arm with fingers on the end thereof moves down and picks up the coil and swings it over into a tying machine where a wire tie is looped around the middle of the coil; the now hanked coil is then ejected into a receptacle. The main difficulty with this type of apparatus is that it is not completely automatic and the speed of operation depends upon the skill of the operator loading the cord. In order to achieve a higher speed of productivity, it would be desirable to have an automatic feeding mechanism to feed the cords to the winding posts. Not only must the cords be fed to the posts, but also they must be held by some form of device which as pointed out above has involved a manual insertion of one end of the cord to the turntable.